The adventures of Gary and Carolyn living aboard and continuously cruising the uk canals and rivers on narrowboat Inca

Wednesday, 18 October 2017

Back on the cut

Pulling pins from our mooring at Shardlow we had a good cruise in front of us today as we wanted to get to the other side of Burton on Trent and try and pick up a mooring at Branston water park . It was good to see this Skein of Geese flying over the top of us as we cruised up the Trent and Mersey canal.

We have seen this one before somewhere but never moving along .It has two small electric outboard engine which are fixed to a bit of timber. It would be interesting to see how fast it goes and how well it handles.

Reaching Weston lock and this is one of the only locks anywhere that Carolyn cant open or close the gates on. As well as them being heavy they also slope back in towards the lock and even with my heavy weight I still struggled.

With the colder weather coming we decided it was time to get some coal on the roof and as we hadn't seen a coal boat for some time we went in to Mercia marina to pick some up. As you can see the new building work is coming on and there will soon be even more high end expensive shops here , just what us boaters need. We assumed that the coal would be on the wharf where you get the diesel but it was up outside the reception. We were told that we would have to sack truck it ourselves from there to the Midland chandlers pontoon where we were told to moor. Needless to say with such poor customer service we didn't bother and went on our way.

Better luck at Shobnall marina for our coal. We pulled up outside and the lovely helpful staff there barrowed out 5 bags of Excel coal to us. This will do us until we meet up with a coal boat and get a full load .

On our way again we pass the Marston's brewery which John Marston established in 1834 at the Horninglow Brewery at Burton upon Trent. By 1861 the brewery produced 3,000 barrels a year. In 1890, Marston & Son Ltd was registered as a limited liability company. In 1898 Marston's amalgamated with John Thompson & Son Ltd and moved to Albion Brewery on Shobnall Road, which the company still operates. By this time the brewery had a capacity of 100,000 barrels a year. It was at this time that the Burton Union system began to be used. In 1905, the company merged with Sydney Evershed to form Marston, Thompson & Evershed.

The British brewery and pub operates over 1,700 pubs in the UK, and is the world's largest brewer of cask ale. 90 per cent of profits come from the pubs division. It was known as Wolverhampton and Dudley Breweries plc until 2007 when it rebranded as Marston's.

It owns six breweries and brands including Marston's, Banks's, Jennings ,Ringwood and Wychwood. Its priority products are Marston's Pedigree and Wychwood Hobgoblin.

After a good cruise we picked up this mooring just before Branston water park . The bridge in front of us has just been built and there is now building work going in in the fields both sides of us and opposite the water park . I dare say that the next time we come this way it will look completely different.

Tomorrow it will be a short cruise to my favourite village of Alrewas where we will spend a few days before heading South for the Winter.

Hi Ade . A couple of weeks behind as always with the blog , there are reasons for doing that . But the weather had been very good up here and is usually better than that in the South West . Having lived most of our lives in Devon we always thought it was better down there on The so called English riviera but it's just not so . The last couple of days here have been dull and overcast with worse to come looking at the forecast.